HEALTHY FOOD

There
is an abundance of Chinese restaurants in Bangladesh, which have a
decidedly darker (in the sense that they lack light but do not lack
security) and more private atmosphere than the common eateries. These
places have wildly varying menus, but the most popular items among
locals are the fried rice and chop suey dishes. You will also find
various combinations of chicken, beef, vegetables and chilli served in
various wet sauces, sometimes spicy. Here you may find difference with
the `authentic' Chinese food, but the dishes are clean, healthy,
attractive and well-cooked food at reasonable prices, and ofcourse
delicious. A meal here will usually cost between Tk100 and Tk250 per
person based on the choice.

CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
In Bangladesh, the best food is often found at home, which is a good
thing given that travellers and guests receive so many dinner
invitations, sometimes from total strangers. It is not expected that you
take up every invitation, but you should try out a few and get a taste
of the best cuisine the country has to offer. Often, homemade meals are
cooked with a lot of love and care, which does require time, and thus
having dinner at a friend's house can become a multi-hour affair for
which you should leave a lot of time and accept the fact that you will
never be able to finish all the food prepared for you. It is the part of
the culture of this land to honour the guest through creating an
amiable ambiance in the home and serving home made delicious food is one
of the ways to show the fervor. In return, you may also express your
attachment by bringing some flowers or food contribution along (sweets
like rosh golla or misti doi are a good choice) or even sending some
photographs later on.

BREAKFAST
The morning meal is consistently the best and most fresh meal available
in any city, town or village of the country. Freshly baked tandoori
naan or pan-fried parata (flatbread can be cooked with less or no oil if
requested) served with a protein-rich thick dal (pulse) and a spicy
momelette (omelette with onion and green chilli) is available just about
everywhere and costs less than US$0.40 or about Tk25. Most upper
mid-range hotels with restaurants will be able to offer you a similar
version of this breakfast - delivered to your room. These same hotels
sometimes offer a ‘western' or 'continental' breakfast which consists of
white toast, a fried egg, banana, butter and jam, and a tea, or perhaps
instant coffee, on request. At NGO guesthouses, this breakfast is often
simpler but freshly prepared: often you can request a chapati, which is
the non-fried version of the Bangladeshi flatbread or they might serve
you the fried version, which is known as a parata. Finally, if you're
the big-breakfast business-buffet type, you'll see these meals are often
included while staying at a four- or five-star venue.

MAIN MEALS
A common Bangladeshi lunch is a heaping plate of rice served with mushy
vegetables (locally known as sobji or bhaji) and an oily meat or fish
curry. Some restaurants serve chicken or mutton biriyani for lunch. A
few restaurants with a better reputation will also serve bharta, which
is a freshly mashed vegetable, usually eggplant, potato or fish.

DINNER
Dinner is a more elaborate affair, as the streets and laneways of most
cities become throbbing and colourful veins of activity after the sun
goes down. At this time there is a lot of food choice available, whether
it be street-side chatpoti or halim (see Snacks below), or perhaps a
few restaurants that do beef or chicken kebabs (beef shikh kebab or
chicken reshmi kebab). The best of these places will also serve freshly
baked tandoori naan and a cucumber salad alongside their dishes.

At
the street-side stalls, breakfast can be served as early as 06.00 and
sometimes as late as 09.30. Lunch is usually ready from 12.30 and stops
late in the afternoon at about 15.00 (most restaurants maintain similar
opening hours). Finally, dinner can be served any time from 07.00 to
10.00, although if you're taking it at a friend's residence, be ready
for it to run even later. Upscale restaurants generally maintain these
hours, except during holidays like Ramadan, when most restaurants do not
serve food during the day because of religious sentiment.

DESSERTS
Bengali desserts are known throughout south Asia, with sweet shops
found as far away as Delhi. Given the sweet tooth of most Bangladeshis,
it's hardly surprising that every region has a famous dessert, with some
notable examples including sweet yoghurt from Bogra (misti doi) to
dough balls served in milk from Comilla (rosh malai). While travelling,
these desserts make good gifts to bring local friends or hosts when they
invite you over for dinner. At that same dinner, you might even be
served homemade desserts despite your belly being terribly full already.
Popular are shemai, a milk-based vermicelli dessert, and payesh, a rice
version of the same thing, pudding, custard are also common.

More
common are a number of misti (sweet) shops found in every city, town
and village of Bangladesh. Here, the most common item is rosh golla,
dough balls that resemble the doughnut holes served in pastry shops of
Western countries. In Bangladesh, these same balls are fried on butter
and soaked in sugary syrup.
� SNACKS Bengali
snack foods are also one of the main items you will see just about
everywhere. The best of these snacks are the humble phuchka and
chatpoti, often served from street carts, mostly in the cities but
sometimes in the countryside as well. Phuchka is a combination of mashed
potatoes and chickpeas, served inside small crispy shells, and topped
with a sour tamarind sauce. Chatpoti is a plate of boiled chickpeas
served with a topping of onions, coriander, chopped green chillies,
grated hard-boiled eggs and more of those same crispy shells found in
phuchka. Some restaurants have a spicy version and an absolutely
delicious yoghurt version. Vegetarians are also guaranteed to fall in
love with this dish, especially the yoghurt version seen at more and
more Dhaka restaurants nowadays. Chaats and puri dishes, are also making
an appearance in some of Dhaka's newer cafes and restaurants, as they
cater to a younger generation whose food tastes have gone well beyond
the mutton biriyani crowd. Indian-style dosas, or Kolkatastyle rolls,
are sometimes found at similar venues.

There are
other, homegrown snacks seen on just about every street corner of
Bangladesh: dozens of deep-fried varieties crowd such food stalls. Most
popular is the shingara, which is usually some mashed potatoes and/or a
carrot/onion mixture wrapped in a thick dough and then fried, or the
samosa (pronounced 'shamosha' in Bangla), a deep-fried triangle-shaped
vegetable pocket. You'll also sometimes see piaju (mashed lentils mixed
with onions and fried) and beguni (battered slices of eggplant) served
alongside, perhaps with a big pile of chow mein noodles too. A pile of
dark chickpeas with a series of colourful green and red chillies means
you're looking at chana, which is usually mixed with puffed rice (muri)
and then served in a bowl with a spoon, probably one of the only
non-fried dishes that qualifies as a common snack food. Mughlai parata, a
scrambled egg with vegetables and spices and then fried inside a
wrapped flatbread, is one of the most popular snacks, and often shared
between several people in the early evening.

Finally,
the last kind of snack worth mentioning is halim, which is actually a
kind of lentil soup that is slow-cooked with beef, mutton or chicken and
a range of delicious spices. Served hot from enormous pots outside
restaurants, this soup is a fairly healthy dish and is found in most
restaurants or snack stalls around the country during the evening.

FRUIT
One of the great rewards for visiting Bangladesh during the hot and
humid season is to taste what must be the most amazing and fresh fruit
available on earth. Blessed with an extremely fertile and verdant
landscape, the country produces its best fruit during what are known as
the `honey months', from June to August. To travel in the heat can be
punishing but to taste the fruit fresh from the orchards is well worth
the effort. Fruit really does taste far better here as opposed to when
it is imported from across the world.

Topping the
list are Bangladeshi mangoes, which are so abundant in the country
during the month of June that prices often drop to less than Tk40 per
kilogram (US$0.65) although they are available at higher prices until
early August. As many Bangladeshis will surely tell you, the national
fruit of the country is the jackfruit, which also comes to market around
this time. Lychees - which originally came from China - also show up in
June, as well as jackfruit and water-bearing green coconuts. During
August, sweet guavas are sold from the street, followed by ripe jambura
and fresh pineapple. Green papaya is available year round but ripens
during the winter months. Sobeda, name of another fruit, found in
winter, is very tasty.

ADIVASI FOOD
Indigenous people, known as Adivasi people in Bangla, make some very
different foods from their neighbours. In particular, the Chittagong
Hill Tracts seem to have a very real love of fish-based flavouring that
resembles Thai or Burmese cooking much more than south Asian cuisine.

A NOTE ABOUT RAMADAN
Eating out is much harder during the period of Ramadan, a Muslim
religious festival in which no food or even water is supposed to be
taken during daylight hours. The fasting, called roja in Bangla, begins
at dawn, after which many families have already awoken well before
sunrise to have a quick meal. During the day, most restaurants - but not
all of them - run a special lftar service during this period, in which
they sell a range of Iftar snack items that are usually packed off and
taken home for eating the moment after sunset. Halim and fried items
dominate these menus. The restaurants then usually reopen for regular
dinner service in the evening although business often stays quite slow
during this time.

Ramadan is a deeply religious
time in Bangladesh, in which the citizens fast in order to remember the
plight of the less fortunate in their society. It is also a time of
giving alms to the poor and practicing religious austerity with friends,
family and colleagues. If travelling during this time, you might like
to try a day of fasting to see how it feels, and certainly this
voluntary starvation does bring on a kind of understanding as to why
people seem quite droopy in the late afternoons.

DRINKINGIn
terms of the law, Bangladeshis are not allowed to carry alcohol in
their private cars without an alcohol licence. Such licences are only
attainable with a doctor's prescription and hence the possession of
alcohol can be legalised for `medical reasons'. There are a few bars in
the big cities that serve local and imported alcohol as well as imported
beer. As a foreigner you are not required to possess such licences.

Amongst
ethnic minorities, the story is naturally different. Because such
people are either Buddhist or Christian, there is not only an acceptance
of alcohol but there is often a culture surrounding it. Most of the
people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts distil their own high-alcohol brews
from rice, which are quite potent and belly warming and best not taken
in too large a quantity. In the Garo areas of Mymensingh, there is
another kind of milder rice wine that is quite excellent and goes well
with meals. The best time of year to visit these places is during the
holiday seasons, where people are more naturally in a festive mood. For
the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the best time is during Bengali New Year (14
April), and for the Garo areas of northern Mymensingh, the best time is
around Christmas.